It is often asserted that oil is essential to the US economy because
"we cannot get the energy we need any other way." Another reason
put forth is that oil is uniquely suited to the purpose of transportation,
and we have nothing else which will serve at a price we can afford.
These claims have enormous technical, economic and political implications.
Anything of such importance should be examined very closely, because the
consequences of being wrong are so great.

The transport sector of the US runs almost entirely on oil. The
US Department of Energy posts
figures
detailing US consumption from 1949 through the latest year presently
available, which is 2002 2004.

Anything that accounts for less than 500,000 bbl/day is insignificant, so
I'll ignore it. What remains are jet fuel, distillate fuel oil
(diesel) and motor gasoline. It's doubtful that anything will
substitute easily for jet fuel so that's out. This leaves diesel
and gasoline, which together account for 58% of all US consumption of
petroleum products.

In that year, gasoline consumption averaged 8.665 million bbl/day, and
diesel another 2.445 million bbl/day. A barrel is 44 US gallons.
The energy content of gasoline
is about 115,000 BTU/gallon while diesel is around 145,000. Over the
road diesel engines hit maximum efficiencies around 40%, while gasoline
engines run quite a bit less than that in normal use, especially with
automatic transmissions; assume 20%. By the time that energy gets
to the wheels it's quite a bit less than the raw fuel consumption would
suggest. What does it amount to, total? What's the average power?

Fuel

mmbbl/day

TBTU/day

Efficiency

Output, TBTU/day

Output, GW

Gasoline

8.665

43.8

20%

8.77

107.0

Diesel

2.455

15.7

40%

6.27

76.5

Total

11.120

59.5

15.04

183.5

An average power of 183.5 GW isn't huge compared to other energy usage.
The summer electric generation capacity of the USA in 2002 was over
900 gigawatts, roughly 5 times as much as the average output of all gasoline and
diesel powered transport.

If we define our transport energy needs as what we actually use (without including
losses in conversion, and ignoring potential improvements in efficiency) it appears
that they are rather modest. An average power of 183.5 GW is less than 700
watts per capita. If it could all be supplied from electricity without
transmission losses it would only increase US consumption by about 40%. That's
a lot of energy, but if it was sent during off-peak hours it wouldn't even make
the grid break a sweat.

This should make you think. If a person's transport energy needs are small
enough that a single 14-gauge extension cord could supply them with capacity
left over, the problem of changing from oil to another energy source might easier
to tackle than is commonly supposed. We don't have to look far for motivation,
either; we have a host of reasons to want to
do this, including

Smog abatement

Reduced noise pollution and
increased urban habitability

Acid-rain reduction

Cutting the financing
of terrorists and their political backers

Geopolitics (non-terrorist)

(Notice that I didn't mention the #1 controversial reason for such a move.)

The required energy supply is within reason. The problem which remains to
be solved is to find a safe, efficient and cheap method of getting energy (whether
from coal, nuclear, or renewables) from the grid to wheels. If we can
package what we need, it's certain that we can get it.